Where the plaster had faded to show the bare bones,
Stood the stable, decaying, with rafters that groaned. 
Slanted with grief and a roof full of holes,
Beside the old graveyard, a long-silenced soul. 

The paint chipped and peeled, left the hayloft exposed,
Its gate warped and wedged with the wood decomposed.
A view of the pub, fixed in vacant despair, 
Disregarded and cold, for no pity was shared. 

The wry batten door at the back called my name,
A veil of brown dust as I broke through the frame. 
Inside was a maze, fallen beams, broken coops,
Still fixed to the walls, I found giant steel loops. 

Angry bats breaking free as I tread down the straw.
Arachnids burst out, vast and black, crawling claws. 
They scattered aghast as I pushed further through,
Like a whispering wave, moving fast as it grew.

I smelled rotting flesh as the air touched my face, 
For all that was left was to end in this place.
Old crates stacked on top, I climbed up with no hope,
One beam, still alive, strong enough for a rope.

I am in love with a memory—
a whisper
from another time,
another place.

It’s a little hazy,
hard to recall.
Maybe
it wasn’t real at all.

But I fell in love,
and it felt pure.
It was romantic.
It made my heart stir.

I was happy.
I was hopeful.
I thought life was finally
following a script.

Every moment had meaning.
Every step had its place.
I thought I knew the ending.
I thought I knew my fate.

Now I’m left wondering:

Was I in love with you,

or was I in love
with the life
I believed we’d live?

Theatre of nostalgia
Two essences on the stage
Mister Past and I
Dancing back to the classic rhythm.

Tick – tock, I hear the echoes
Of footsteps fading long ago,
Memories lays on fragile shadows
Dancing where I used to know.

Tick – tock, footstep touch on the next track
Mister past still hums on every dance,
Soft as dust in golden light,
Calling me through distant whispers,
Break the silence of the night.

Tick – tock, I stand within the present
Breathing moments as they are,
Yet the echoes keep on weaving
Threads of then into the now.

Tick – tock, and somewhere in nowhere future,
Echoes come a thing
Timing to what would be
Lighting beyond the dawn.

Tick – tock, tick – tock and tick – tock
Beginning to the end
While the end is beginning
Past to present then future
What reason for splitting them
While it always be nonsensical
Time resounds in endless circles.

I drink a coffee and think about 
how everyone dies like the unended song 

written in the margins of a notebook. I want 
to ask my pra-wujek if the house is built

on cinderblocks, are the foundations weak, and 
if the best alarm is the cockerel, will it

appeal to Saint Peter on our behalf? 
And if you do not wake up from the floor,

hand on your chest, and your father comes
to collect you, and you never met him, 

will you recognise him by the wounds 
on his head or the picture on the wall? 

If your body was not left in the house 
long enough after you died, did you 

say goodbye to the paperwork
that was your afterlife? 

Did you see your brother cut 
everything down and did you feel

pra-babcia’s death place its roots
in the earth after your heart gave up? 

And if you’re still around could you tell me
why our hearts have become so weak? 

If you see your mother, could you tell her 
my mother misses her, and that she 

never became an opera singer like she wanted,
and could you pass on our love to yourself?

Could you rewind the clock and give us
your pain and maybe our lives wouldn’t have 

carried on as they did after you died, maybe
we’d still have our fruit trees, and maybe 

I could hear more of your jokes so I can
imagine what your voice was when you 

appeared in the window that day 
and said something I couldn’t hear 

from this side of the living.